The Built Environment, Political Orientation & Personality: Preferences and Sense of Place Development

One of the most crucial ways in which an individual defines their physical environment is through forming a sense of place (SOP). Previous work has investigated the ways in which both new and old built environments have played a major role in defining “place”, separate from “space”. However, the suburb, a more modern conception of built environment heavily reliant on auto-centric design, has been conceived to remove place from community design, designating such areas as “placeless”. Therefore, because individuals prefer places that align with their personalities and political beliefs, we predict that individuals will demonstrate the least preference towards suburban built environments due to their high concentration of transportation-centric design. Results demonstrate that, while there exists little difference in preferences between urban, suburban, and rural environments, individuals have stronger and more positive preferences towards human-centric design as opposed to transportation-centric design, largely based upon their dominant personality domains and political preferences. Such results indicate that individuals do prefer built environments based upon the traits they possess, with human-centric environments emphasizing the underlying traits of urban, suburban, and rural built environments.